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Friday, November 17, 2006

Today was my final day before a week long Thanksgiving break. While these days can be very difficult, today’s “day before break begins” was actually very enjoyable. Our fourth graders experienced Gobble Up Books Day, an activity very similar to DEAR (Drop Everything and Read). We read all day……….students read books based on their independent reading level and took Accelerated Reader tests for comprehension in every class. Over the last few weeks all of my students except for three have qualified for a reward party based on the number of points they have accumulated. The three that haven’t yet are well on their way, and I should have 100% by Christmas. One of my unmotivated boys has reached his goal. When I found out I sought him out in the lunchroom, placed my arm around his shoulder and said, “I’m so proud of your accomplishment. If you keep this up you will be a dynamite 5th grader.” He just grinned. After lunch he was the first one in the room saying, “C’mon, let’s get back to reading. I love to read!” It was a lovely day. I got to read all day as well. No discipline problems. No petty tattle-telling. I swear I entered a parallel universe today. I already have thanksgiving in my heart.

On the other hand Mrs. Cornelius spent quite a different day than I did. See her recap here.

Deemae, recently commented on my post Disclose Your Favorite Top Five . I did the polite thing and quickly responded to her comment before clicking on through to visit her site. She had a lovely post titled Thankful For a Good Story. Click on over and read it here. It takes random acts of kindness to a different kind of level.

Have you been by BibliOdyssey lately? The pictures simply amaze me. The technical drawings seen here resemble Leonardo da Vinci but are the work of Mariano di Iacopo, who began at the age of 50 to produce engineering manuscripts. Scroll down past several pictures to read the informative text.

J.L. Bell over at Boston, 1775 has been posting a series of articles about Boston vocabulary I find very interesting. Here is a post on the meaning of “little-house” along with sections of testimony from the trials following the Boston Massacre.

Daily Perspective has an update regarding changes at NewspaperARCHIVE.com. The post states: once the changes go through you will be able to read news from each in history…right on the homepage…….each day will also feature current news linked to related newspaper articles from the past, helping to give you some historical perspective on today’s headlines. See the post here.

Well, what I have mentioned here isn’t all that is notable and quotable out and about, but these blogs I’ve mentioned are right up there at the top.Give these folks a shout out and then go find more…a good start would be at my links list.

Sorry Ms. C. May your school board soon see the light. If it wil make you feel any better for the last two years we have also had a week off in October for Fall break. They took it away this year and only gave us two days.

Wow, teachergirl. Thanks for the compliments. I'm glad you read me all the time. I'll make sure I come by and read you as well. I didn't know you were there. I wonder though.....who else is out there reading me all the time that I don't about? Don't ya think it's time you let me know? :)